High Court Backs Use of Affirmative Action : President Is Rebuffed in Two Rulings

The Supreme Court granted strong new support Wednesday for affirmative action plans for hiring and promoting minorities, rejecting the Reagan Administration’s contention that only the actual victims of discrimination are entitled to special job preferences.

The justices said also that limited employment goals or quotas that do not directly penalize whites do not violate the equal protection clause of the Constitution or federal civil rights statutes.

The rulings upheld the general principles of affirmative action plans that now exist across the nation--and marked a major setback for the Reagan Administration, which had argued repeatedly for a “colorblind” society in which job quotas should be barred and preferential treatment limited to those who could show that they had experienced discrimination.

Voluntary Programs

The justices, in decisions in two cases, extended the authority of courts to enforce affirmative action plans and strengthened the ability of public and private employers to adopt voluntary programs to remedy the effects of past discrimination against blacks and other minorities.

Nine opinions were issued, reflecting splintered voting among the justices. All but two members of the court--soon-to-retire Chief Justice Warren E. Burger and his designated successor, Justice William H. Rehnquist--rejected the Administration’s contention that job preferences always should be limited to actual victims of discrimination.

The justices, in a 5-4 ruling, upheld a federal court order establishing a 29% minority membership goal for a sheet metal workers’ union in New York found to have long excluded nonwhite applicants.

Promotion Pact Upheld

It upheld also, in a 6-3 decision, a federal court-approved agreement between the city of Cleveland and black and Latino firefighters that guaranteed minorities half of the promotions in the fire department, even if they were elevated over whites with more seniority and higher test scores.

The court’s main opinions in both cases were written by Justice William J. Brennan Jr., who, in a plurality opinion in the New York case, declared:

“A court may have to resort to race-conscious affirmative action when confronted with an employer or labor union that has engaged in persistent or egregious discrimination. Or such relief may be necessary to dissipate the lingering effects of pervasive discrimination.”

Justice Byron R. White issued sharp dissents in both cases, asserting in the Cleveland case that the court had turned federal civil rights law into “a one-way racial street, thus disserving the goal of ending racial discrimination in this country.” However, he conceded that in some “unusual” cases job preferences for people who have not personally been discriminated against might be acceptable.

The rulings were met with disappointment by Justice Department officials.

“There is no question that the court did not agree with the position advanced by the Administration,” Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III said. “We will continue to hold to the moral position that the court itself in each of these cases has re-established as the ultimate goal, that (we) would have a colorblind society and that we would not have racial preferences.”

Civil rights groups widely praised the decisions, as did some employer organizations.

Opening the Door

“The rulings open the door for blacks to professions that have historically excluded them, integrating them into the work force and creating a climate where affirmative action will no longer be necessary,” said Julius L. Chambers, director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

Bill McEwen of the National Assn. of Manufacturers said that the court had “reinforced the concept of affirmative action and recognized its value as a tool to eradicate the present effects of past discrimination.”

In the New York case (Local 28 vs. EEOC, 84-1656), Brennan, joined by Justices Thurgood Marshall, Harry A. Blackmun and John Paul Stevens, rejected the Administration’s contention that a court decision in 1984 had precluded a judge from imposing a race-conscious plan that might benefit minority members who had not personally suffered discrimination.

In the 1984 ruling, the court held that a judge could not order the city of Memphis, Tenn., to lay off white firefighters with more seniority than blacks.

Brennan said that the Memphis ruling merely prohibited a court from interfering with a valid seniority system and did not prevent courts from ordering broad, race-conscious programs “to dismantle prior patterns of employment discrimination and to prevent discrimination in the future.”

‘Goal’ Called Flexible

Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., providing a pivotal fifth vote to uphold the New York plan, said that civil rights statutes do not require that all programs be limited to benefiting actual victims and that the court-imposed 29% “goal” was sufficiently flexible and limited in duration to pass muster.

Powell emphasized that it did not appear that whites “will be burdened directly, if at all,” because none of them would be laid off under the court order. This case, he noted, was different from a case the justices decided in May invalidating a plan by the Jackson, Mich., school board that protected black teachers from layoffs over whites with more seniority.

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, although supporting parts of Brennan’s opinion, agreed with White’s dissent that courts should not be allowed to issue what in this case was a “rigid racial quota.”

Rehnquist, joined by Burger, also dissented, saying that race-conscious remedies should be limited to actual victims.

Whites Claimed Bias

Brennan’s opinion in the Cleveland case (Local 93 vs. Cleveland, 84-1999) was joined by Marshall, Blackmun, Powell, Stevens and O’Connor. The justices rejected a charge by a union local, backed by the Administration, that the court-approved pact between the city and minority-member firefighters violated the rights of whites.

The justices said that courts, through consent decrees, were free to approve voluntary agreements between employers and minorities that may go further in providing racial preferences than a court could order after a trial.

O’Connor, in a concurring opinion, emphasized that, under the justices’ decision, whites remain free to challenge race-conscious affirmative action plans they believe discriminate against them. She said also that voluntary plans must be predicated on a showing that an employer or a union actually had been responsible for discrimination in the past.

White, who had written the majority opinion in the 1984 Memphis case, said that the Cleveland promotion plan unfairly rewarded blacks who had suffered no discrimination and penalized whites who in no way inflicted discrimination.

“This kind of leapfrogging minorities over senior and better qualified whites is an impermissible remedy . . . just as in (the Memphis case) laying off senior whites was an excessive remedy and just as in (the Jackson, Mich., case) the equal protection clause did not require or permit the layoff of white teachers in order to maintain a particular racial balance in the workplace.”